The chairman of the USCCB’s subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage has reacted to the Gov. Cuomo’s and the NY state legislature’s promotion of the legalization of contrary-to-nature unions.

Marriage redefinition bill an “abandonment of the common good,” says Bishop Cordileone

Bill passed 33-29, four days after normal end of legislative session
Religious exemption language released hours before final vote

WASHINGTON—In response to last Friday’s enactment of a law redefining marriage in the State of New York, Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, expressed “grave disappointment with the legislature’s abandonment of the common good.”
“Marriage, the union of a man and a woman, forms the foundation of social well-being by promoting love and respect between the two most fundamental representatives of the human community,” he said. [Distortion of marriage must result in the distortion of other societal bonds.] “The institution of marriage also affirms the vital and unique importance to children of receiving care from both their mother and father together. Making marriage law indifferent to the absence of either sex creates an institutional and cultural crisis with generational ramifications yet to be seen. [In Humanae vitae Paul VI and the Catholic Church were right about the consequences of contraception. The Church is also right about this issue. When you are right, you can’t be wrong.] To eliminate marriage’s very essence – its essence as the union of husband and wife – from its legal definition is to ignore not only basic anthropology and biology but also the purpose of law generally. Law is meant to uphold the common good, not undermine it. Now, New York’s government will be forced to ignore that children have a basic right to be raised by their mother and father together. Also, as demonstrated in other states where marriage redefinition has occurred, officials there will be in a position to retaliate against those who continue to uphold these basic truths. This is a mark of a profoundly unjust law.”
The bill, entitled the Marriage Equality Act, was passed by a margin of 33 to 29 votes in the state senate and signed into law on June 24, four days after the legislative session was supposed to have ended. [Signed by a “catholic” governor. For this and for other reasons, Gov. Cuomo should not attempt to receive Holy Communion or be allowd to receive Communion by ministers until he publicly repents and makes amends.] It dictates that “a marriage that is otherwise valid shall be valid regardless of whether the parties to the marriage are of the same or different sex.” The bill also directs that all other laws dealing with marriage or gender-specific subjects be reinterpreted to include two persons of the same sex who have obtained a marriage license. While the legislature included exemption language to give some protection to religious organizations—language made public only in the last hours before the vote—its actual legal effect will have to be scrutinized. [How long will it be until someone challenges that language and challenges the Catholic Church on this issue?] Nonetheless, Bishop Cordileone noted, “Marriage is a fundamental good that must be protected in every circumstance. Exemptions of any kind never justify redefining marriage.”
Thousands of people at the grassroots level contacted key legislators in New York, urging them to oppose redefining marriage. “Those courageous legislators and active citizens in New York who defended marriage should be applauded for their inspiring witness,” Bishop Cordileone said. His comments follow recent statements by the Bishops of New York (available here and here.

To eliminate marriage’s very essence – its essence as the union of husband and wife – from its legal definition is to ignore not only basic anthropology and biology but also the purpose of law generally. Law is meant to uphold the common good, not undermine it. Now, New York’s government will be forced to ignore that children have a basic right to be raised by their mother and father together. Also, as demonstrated in other states where marriage redefinition has occurred, officials there will be in a position to retaliate against those who continue to uphold these basic truths. This is a mark of a profoundly unjust law.

Very effective language. Especially in view of the fact that this whole thing is being pushed through in the name of “being fair” to everyone.

How about “Grave Condemnation” instead of “disappointment”??? Good grief. Even Christ got angry at the appropriate time.

Will our bishops ever STAND UP AND FIGHT for the FAITH? Language is important and putting out some vapid statement about being disappointed only ticks off the truly faithful, gives no direction to the lukewarm, and emboldens the apostates. No wonder the Church’s numbers are bleeding to death.

The Bishops’ moving their eclessiastical recliners from “fully back” to “upright” position is not the same as getting up out of one’s seat to fight for what’s right….

Good statement. I am glad the bishop mentioned anthropology & biology eg, in anthropology marriage was always presented as a means of alliances as well as kinship, and reproduction, continuing a society, etc.. We can’t win arguments just on our religious beliefs since we’re in a pluralist society. Of course anthropology, that marriage was always hetero for alliances/kinship, proves the Catholic natural law theory (even w/some peoples practicing polygamy). No society had to be told by the Judeo-Christian God what marriage was for. It is inscribed in every human heart, in the remotest corners of the earth. No society held up gay unions are comparable in any way. They are not the same, thus cannot be appropriately treated the same.

I am surprised that the libertarians didn’t recognize that gays had greater freedom with no state recognition of their unions. Now they’ll be subject to state regulation as are marriages of a man and woman.

Gay marriage is a Trojan horse for the truly satanic ‘gender-benders’ and bona fide lunatic ‘professors of Queer Studies’ who seek to ‘deconstruct’ gender (and the essential nature of humanity itself) and embrace the absolute relativism of the insane asylum. I used to live in NYC and notice that the mass media carefully screens the public from the most shocking degradations of the ‘Gay Pride’ parades [Extreme S&M, Self-Mutilation, frontal nudity, public sex acts and of course the ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ transvestite God-haters.

By the way in the nightmare years of the gay AIDS epidemic in the 70’s and 80’s, years of hopelessness and no real treatments, it was the Catholic sisters and Catholic relief organizations who were #1 in caring for indigent AIDS patients in NYC.

So now what? What has changed. In spanish there is a saying that says “Las palabras se las lleva el viento” Words are taken away by the wind. The bishops just keep making themselves and the church more and more irrelevant.

This is, like the “law” that grants “the right” to an abortion, so-called “justice” and “equality” granted at the price of inflicting grave injustice and inequality upon our entire culture and all of humankind. It is precisely as the Bishop writes: “This is a mark of a profoundly unjust law.”

While we are naturally greatly angered at this grave injustice, perhaps couching our reactions in tempered language such as that used by the Bishop is best– because we are speaking to a world that does not understand and share our anger, and would in turn only try to use it against us.

Jesus did not overcome the world by overturning the moneychangers’ tables. Pray, live a holy life, and offer sacrifices– and trust in the Lord (cf Ps 4). This is the greatest witness and sure path to conversions of heart. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world (1 John 4).

“Also, as demonstrated in other states where marriage redefinition has occurred, officials there will be in a position to retaliate against those who continue to uphold these basic truths. ”

I’m a bit confused by the sentence structure. I think the bishop refers to the New York legislature when he says “officials there”? Perhaps some sort of exemplification of the retaliation he fears can cited, too?

Lucky you, Jason, if you can do that. In the UK it breaches the “human rights” of gays if the doors are shut – so Catholic Adoption Agencies either have to hand the kids over (only the cute ones of course) or shutdown.

I find it more than disturbing that there was no mention of the fact that to condone engaging in homosexual sexual acts, or any sexual act that demeans the inherent dignity of the human person, is to deny the inherent, unalienable Right of every person to be treated with dignity and respect.

[In Humanae vitae Paul VI and the Catholic Church were right about the consequences of contraception. The Church is also right about this issue. When you are right, you can’t be wrong.]

I’ll take issue with the last sentence. Many centuries ago the Church said, explicitly by participation in and implicitly by failing to condemn, that it was right to burn witches, heretics and Jews. I guess, if the Church was right then, we need to barbeque anyone today who thinks and advocates that marriage should be redefined.. I say, “light the pyres!” Father Z, I will gladly provide you with the match.

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"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."

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